DOE expands support for tracking and cutting methane
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The Energy Department just closed a $162 million loan guarantee for LongPath Technologies to expand its methane monitoring in big oil- and gas-producing basins.
Why it matters: It's the first time DOE's loan office has supported greenhouse gas emissions tracking projects.
- Cutting methane output is key to limiting how much global temps rise, so pinpointing leaks is key.
Driving the news: The money will help pay for building and installing over 1,000 remote monitoring towers for real-time tracking.
- They'll operate in prolific basins in Texas, Colorado and elsewhere.
- The financing will enable Boulder, Colo.-based LongPath to expand, over multiple years, to over 24,000 square miles of monitoring coverage, covering tens of thousands of sites, the company said.
- That's up from hundreds of square miles today.
The big picture: The network is slated to stem an annual emissions equivalent to taking 1.3 million gasoline-powered cars off the road, DOE said.
- It's part of wider U.S. and global efforts to track methane emissions that include new, sophisticated satellites.
How it works: It relies on lasers deployed atop modular towers that can detect molecules.
- A single laser can monitor eight square miles and provide updates every two hours, they said.
- LongPath and DOE say the tech provides more continuous and precise monitoring — and at lower costs — than many methods today.
Stunning stat: "Their technology has gotten so cheap that $1 of investment into monitoring, plus another dollar of investment into fixing the leaks, results in $5 to $10 of additional product that companies can sell," said Jigar Shah, head of DOE's loan office.
- "That's a pretty good return on investment. And so that's what we like to see when we're checking for the reasonable prospect of repayment," he said in an interview.
State of play: U.S. producers are vowing increasing steps to stem methane from wells, processors and other equipment — and face pressure to act.
- EPA regulations, and fees in the 2022 climate law, are both federal sticks, while there's also financial and technical assistance.
The intrigue: While those are important, the producers' business model doesn't live or die based on policies that are subject to political changes, LongPath chief marketing officer Rachael Shayne tells me via email.
- Customers are also driven by other priorities like capturing more product instead of letting it escape; community safety; and more.
Catch up quick: LongPath, based in Boulder, Colo., was founded in 2017 and has raised $34.5 million.
- Backers include oilfield services company ProFrac, gas infrastructure giant Williams, and DOE's ARPA-E.
- The company is also exploring work with sectors like mining and waste management.
What they're saying: "As governor, we made sure Colorado led the country with the first methane regulations of their kind," Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) said in a statement. "We're building on that leadership to create real-time methane emissions monitoring for the rest of the country thanks to these Inflation Reduction Act investments and our homegrown innovators like LongPath."
The bottom line: Biden administration officials are deploying a suite of approaches to tackle methane.
